


there were signs from the start

by peachis



Category: The Haunting of Hill House (TV 2018)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, F/M, Ghosts, Haunting, Sibling Incest, Substance Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:28:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26832190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peachis/pseuds/peachis
Summary: The house stole Nell, once. The house keeps stealing her.
Relationships: Eleanor "Nell" Crain/Luke Crain
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52
Collections: Bring Your Own Boos 2020





	there were signs from the start

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girlsarewolves](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/gifts).



_One_

Luke’s born first.

Secretly, he doesn’t like to think about it, that there was a time when he was in the world without Nell. 

When they’re a little older, it’s a point of pride. He’s older. He’s taller, for a few years at least, until Nell catches up, and then he outstrips her again for good.

“You’re the same age,” Steven snaps when he tires of them bickering about it. “You’ve existed as long as each other, it doesn’t matter who was born first.”

They’re learning biology in school and the teacher uses them as an example for the class. Fraternal twins, she explains, are dizygotic. 

“Identical twins are born from one egg but you two were always separate, entirely individual. Isn’t that great?”

Nell doesn’t think so. Luke finds her hiding during recess, crouched behind the slide, knees tucked up tight beneath her chin. 

“We’re the same,” she insists, little fists clenched and eyes red-rimmed.

“We’re still twins.”

“They don’t get it. No one understands-”

Luke sits down beside her. “I do.”

“We were always together,” Nell whispers, turning into him and wrapping her arms around him.

Luke tucks his chin over her shoulder and hopes they always will be.

  
_Two_

Aunt Janet puts them in different bedrooms. Nell sneaks into Luke’s the very first night and won’t be moved. Nell has always had night terrors, and now Luke does too, but sleep comes easier when they’re sleeping side by side. 

It’s a year at least before anyone tries to do something about them sharing a bed, and by that point the habit is too entrenched to break. Theo takes their side when Shirley kicks up a fuss, because them sharing means she gets her own room. 

“It’s not normal,” Aunt Janet hisses into the phone. She doesn’t notice Luke listening. “Nothing about any of this is normal.”

She watches them all with weary eyes, and Dad hardly ever comes around anymore anyway, and so it slides, and slides, until middle school when Luke finally makes some friends outside of his weird family and starts staying at their houses or staying out late and crashing on the pull-out couch downstairs in the den.

Nell doesn’t like it, but Luke knows by then that it’s the way things have to be.

  
_Three_

Luke comes home wasted, because that’s something he does now. Cheap beer on his breath, Nell’s quiet judgement in the back of his mind like a cold spot under the buzz of shitty high school quality pot. He can feel her, awake, waiting, as he climbs the stairs and pauses outside the open bedroom door. 

Nell’s curled on her side facing the window, curtains left parted enough that he can see to pick his way across the floor without stumbling. The streetlight casts strange shadows across the sheets, painting the room in shades of sickly yellow.

“I’m awake.”

The room tilts when he crawls under the covers. Nell is stillness in a violently spinning world, and he clings to her too tightly.

“I know.”

He wishes she was asleep. Wishes he hadn’t drunk so much. Wishes he’d drunk a little more.

Nell curls into him and her hair is soft against the overheated skin of his throat and her head fits tucked against his neck like it always has.

“Go to sleep,” he says when Nell tangles them together, bare legs scraping against the rough denim of his jeans.

“You first.”

  
_Four_

Ninety days clean, one for every second he lived in a world without Nell. The irony, when it hits, hurts.

The fourth step keeps tripping him. It’s sent him spiraling more than once, he's not ashamed to admit that, even if he can’t confess the rest of his sins. Nell forgives too easily, she always has. The lies, the stealing, making her pick up for him, she lets it all go. He wishes she wouldn’t, almost as often as he thanks his lucky stars for her grace.

She believes in him, when no one else does. Sometimes that belief, that faith, feels like the last tiny flickering light in the world. Luke knows he doesn’t deserve it.

The fourth fucking step, a fearless moral inventory. A bearing of truths. There’s one he’s been holding too close to the chest, for far too long, and he can’t- he won’t- tell.

Shoots and ladders, back to the start.

_Five_

Sometimes, Luke’s not sure that any of it was real.

  
_Six_

The house stole Nell, once. The house keeps stealing her. She’s gone and gone and gone and

_you go in there and you bring my brother back_

“Bring me back, Luke,” Nellie whispers in the red room. At least, he thinks it’s Nell. “You can save me.”

Luke can’t breathe but that doesn’t seem to matter. Nell is there and she’s smiling, or maybe she’s crying, or maybe it’s both.

“It has to be seven,” Nell says, holding his face in her hands.

_it helps if you touch_

“I believe in you.”

Luke kisses her and it’s cold. He never thought it would be cold

_there’s no without_

but there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for Nell. Nothing he doesn’t want to do for her.

_Seven_

They are in the red room and they are in their old bedroom down the hall and they are at Aunt Janet’s in the twin bed with the broken slats and sagging mattress and

Nell’s fingers are in his hair, and she tastes like 

there’s black mold on the walls but the streetlight shining through the curtains is golden and warm, Nellie is in his lap and her hips fit just so in his hands

Luke’s head spins and the ground tilts beneath him and he pulls back to catch his breath or to press his mouth against the skin of her neck, but

Nell presses him back against the floor and her eyes are soft but her mouth is not

“Am I awake?” 

Nell smiles. “You’re with me.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title: Black Confetti - Slowly Slowly


End file.
